This conference took a critical look at prostitution, pornography, and surrogacy. There was a range of interactive workshops alongside panel sessions in the main hall. Tickets were on a sliding scale from £5 to £40, with £15 being the standard price. We asked people to simply select the ticket price that best matched their financial circumstances.

Programme: Main hall

Download the main hall programme.

Morning session

Opening plenary

• Valérie Tender: A continuum of disrespect for women as whole human beings. Valérie, a sex trade survivor, discussed the harm caused to women involved in pornography, prostitution and surrogacy by dissociation, how it is not a “special skill” certain women have, and how the commodification of women’s bodies cannot comply with labour and employment laws and practices.
• Hannah Coban: The social media to sexual exploitation pipeline. Hannah works for Kairos, a charity in Coventry supporting women at risk of or subject to sexual exploitation. Her talk examined how social media is being used to groom and exploit girls and women and how we can support those who are subject to sexual exploitation.
• Heli St Luce: The Nordic Model and how it differs from full decriminalisation. Heli introduced the Nordic Model approach to prostitution and explained how it compares with the fully decriminalised approach beloved by the sexploitation industry.

Break

What’s wrong with surrogacy?

• Anna Fisher: Surrogacy in the UK. A brief look at the current law on surrogacy in the UK and the Law Commission’s proposals for change.
• Olivia Maurel: A surrogacy born child fighting against surrogacy today. Olivia talked about her personal story being born through surrogacy, the harms it has caused her, and why surrogacy should be banned to protect children
• Gary Powell: Surrogacy as reckless commercialism: the degradation of the human on the altar of bogus LGBT+ rights. Surrogacy has been given a power-boost in recent years by the LGBT+ lobby and the claims that gay men have a human right to be biological parents. The consequence of this is that opposing surrogacy gets condemned as “bigoted” and a violation of gay rights. Gary, himself a gay man, explained the flaws in this argument and the risks that the multibillion-dollar surrogacy industry poses.
• Marie-Anne Isabelle: This is what is wrong with surrogacy. Marie-Anne, who was an altruistic surrogate for a family member, explained why she believes the official HFEA advice that surrogacy for a family member is a good option is misguided; how things went terribly wrong for her; and how she came to realise that this is far from unusual.
• Q&A/discussion.

Afternoon session

The sex industry: A conducive context for male violence? This started with a short film that juxtaposes prostitution adverts, sex buyer (punter) reviews, and survivor testimony and was followed by:

• Valérie Tender: Punter Reviews – Adding insult to injury. How does it feel when a woman involved in prostitution reads the reviews that punters have left about her?
• Linda Thompson: Money and Power – A brief overview of the global sex industry, its power dynamics and links with mainstream culture.
• Merly Åsbogård: Sexual exploitation as VAWG. Speaking from her own experience of prostitution along with her academic research, Merly explained why we need to understand sexual exploitation as violence against women and girls (VAWG) and how that violence runs through the whole of society – it does not end with the individual prostitution encounter.
• Julia Long: Pornification: the sex industry as a model for male / female relations. This talk provided a radical feminist analysis of the pornification of culture, looking at how the sex industry informs wider social relations between women and men, including the construction of femininity and heterosexuality.
• Q&A/discussion.

Break

Closing plenary

• Kellie Ziemba: Not a private matter. Kellie discussed the themes covered during the course of the day and confirmed that women being on sale in the sexploitation and surrogacy industries is indeed a public crisis that urgently needs addressing.
• Reem Alsalem. United Nations Special Rapporteur on violence against women and girls, its causes and consequences.
• Q&A
• Heli St Luce sings All The Fun Girls.

We booked space in a nearby pub for afterwards, where everyone was invited to join us to continue the conversation in a more relaxed environment.

Workshop options

Women, Sex and Desire: Navigating our pornified world in relationships and beyond. For women only. This was aimed primarily at younger women struggling to date, form relationships and develop careers in a world in which many (if not most) of their male contemporaries are now heavy porn users and OnlyFans and prostitution are sold as empowering. There was an opportunity to discuss the impact of porn, and practical strategies for addressing this in sex and relationships, as well as misogyny in the workplace. Facilitator: Eileen.

Pornification deprogramming. For men only. This workshop was run by men for men who want to explore the impact of porn and the wider sex industry on their lives and attitudes and how to de-programme from that and become part of a movement for more meaningful and egalitarian relationships between men and women. Facilitators: Michael Conroy and Björn Suttka.

A Small Collection of Innocuous Objects. This workshop was facilitated by Jimini Hignett, an artist and writer whose work has, for many years, focused on prostitution. Hignett’s book of the same name formed the impetus for the workshop in which a slide show of supposedly ‘innocuous’ tourist souvenirs – including fridge magnets, snow globes, salt and pepper shakers – from the red-light district of Amsterdam (a city Hignett has lived in for almost 40 years), was juxtaposed with a short film of a male actor narrating the text of a young Dutch prostitution survivor challenging the idea that involvement in the prostitution industry is a free and positive choice. Unveiling the subliminal message conveyed by the imagery, the incongruities between the survivors’ testimonies and the world portrayed by the souvenirs, sheds light on the larger links which are often ignored in the debate concerning prostitution, and opens up a space for participants to reflect on what these objects mean, and to discuss their implications for society and the adults and children in whose kitchens and living rooms they end up. Facilitator: Jimini Hignett

Raising kids in a pornified world – This workshop was aimed at anyone who cares for, or works with, children and young people. It outlined an up-to-date context of pornography and the sex trade and suggested practical strategies for: having age-appropriate conversations about pornography and the sex trade; encouraging children and young people to speak up if they feel unsafe; and supporting children and young people to recognise the harms of pornography and the sex trade. Facilitator: Helen McDonald.

A woman’s experiential journey: Supporting women with experience of the sex industry – This workshop was primarily aimed at professionals working in healthcare, the VAWG sector, the criminal justice system, the police, housing or addiction services, and similar. It focused on how to effectively support women who are or have been in the sex industry. Facilitators: Sally Jackson and Hannah Shead.

Campaigning against surrogacy in the UK and beyond. A workshop looking at the issues caused by surrogacy and reform in the UK and abroad, focusing on recent legal change in Ireland. This workshop examined how different feminist groups are campaigning against surrogacy and looked at practical actions to make change. Facilitators: Lexi and Marie Josèphe Devillers.

Groomed (women only). An intimate space for a small group of women to explore first memories of being sexualised with the (longer term) aim of reclaiming female sexuality on our own terms. Facilitator: Heli St Luce.

Speakers and facilitators

Reem Alsalem, United Nations Special Rapporteur on violence against women and girls, its causes and consequences. Earlier this year she presented a ground-breaking report on prostitution to the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva. It is impossible to overstate the importance of this, given that most of the UN subsidiary organisations have been lobbying for full decriminalisation of the prostitution system for more than a decade. More recently, she has released a position paper about services to help women exit prostitution. Reem spoke on the closing plenary.

Merly Åsbogård: Merly is a political scientist, prostitution survivor and activist from Sweden. She spoke on The sex industry: A conducive context for male violence? panel.

Hannah Coban: Hannah is Head of Service Delivery at Kairos, responsible for the operational management and development of all our services, ensuring that services meet the needs of the women we support. With a BA(Hons) in Economics, Social Sciences and Social Policy, and having taught in higher education settings, she has been working in the third sector for over 10 years, initially as an advocate for young people with multiple and complex unmet needs, before moving to managing services for young people and women. Hannah spoke on the opening plenary.

Michael Conroy: Michael is the founder of Men At Work and creator of the ‘12 Dialogues’ resource for those working with boys and young men. After working in Secondary education for 16 years, he now trains educators and youth workers in facilitating constructive dialogues with male students on a range of themes around sexism, misogyny, objectification, risk-taking behaviours, peer pressure and personal autonomy. Michael has spoken as a panelist in a Parliamentary Select Committee on Sexual Harassment in Public Spaces and at an APPG session on Sex Education. Michael facilitated the Pornification deprogramming workshop for men with Björn Suttka.

Marie Josèphe Devillers: Marie Josèphe is co-president of ICASM, International Coalition for the Abolition of Surrogate Motherhood, which is a feminist international initiative with more than 50 member organisations around the world. She co-facilitated the Campaigning against surrogacy in the UK and beyond workshop.

Eileen: Eileen is a radical feminist. She is particularly interested in the impact of porn on personal relationships and how it affects women’s abilities to advocate for their wants and needs both in sex and beyond, and how women can overcome that to set boundaries with confidence.

Anna Fisher: Anna is the co-founder of Nordic Model Now! (NMN) and led the project to provide template responses to the Law Commission’s 2019 consultation on their proposals to open up commercial style surrogacy in the UK. When the Law Commission published their final recommendations and draft bill, they acknowledged that of the 681 responses they received, a majority opposed most or all of the provisional proposals and advocated instead for surrogacy to be prohibited, and that most of these responses used the NMN template. Anna spoke on the What’s wrong with surrogacy? panel.

Jimini Hignett has lived and worked in Edinburgh, London, New York, Moscow, Havana, Buenos Aires and Amsterdam. Her recent exhibitions include Up in Smoke – an installation linking contemporary misogynist ‘incel’ groups to historical practices of the persecution of women as ‘witches’ – and Nr.1 Tourist Attraction – an expose of the Dutch sex industry at the Amsterdam Museum (and where adherents of the industry demonstrated with placards and attempted to have the installation closed). She is also the author of five books: and a full-length documentary.

Prior to becoming an artist-activist-writer she earned a living in a plethora of ways, both in the arts – performing, set-designing, film-making – and beyond – as a saxophone repairer, court-jester, roller-skating waitress, chimpanzee, and teacher and DJ of Argentine tango.

‘As an artist I find it essential that my work engages with important social themes, and that it can work as a reflective tool for unravelling issues relating to social injustice, inequalities, and the underlying structures supporting the assignment of power in relation to class, race and gender. I hope, in the words of the late John Berger, for my art to make “sense of what life’s brutalities cannot” – art as a tool for radical change for a better world.’

Emily Husain: Emily is a civil barrister and feminist who has volunteered with women’s organisations and groups addressing violence against women for several years. Emily has a particular interest in the domestic and international legislative framework surrounding prostitution and she joined NMN in 2023. Emily chaired proceedings in the main hall.

Marie-Anne Isabelle: Marie-Anne is a mum of two young people, a former primary school teacher who specialised in special educational needs. Since she was a surrogate mother for a family member, this has given her a new incentive to further her career in psychology which she majored in at university. She has a keen interest in criminal psychology particularly with young people. Her passions are her family whom have given her so much support and her dog Violet whom has been her lifeline. Marie-Anne is passionate about exposing the dangers of surrogacy which poses real risks both physically and psychologically to both mother and child.

Lexi: Lexi has worked for non-profit organisations throughout her career, from access to education to women’s reproductive rights. Her interests centre around women and children’s human rights. Along with her co-founder, she launched Stop Surrogacy Now UK in 2019, in direct response to the UK Law Commission’s public consultation on surrogacy law reform. Stop Surrogacy Now UK has a number of concerns with the draft Bill that resulted from that consultation and seeks to challenge the pro-surrogacy media narrative and raise awareness of the harms of surrogacy, including ‘surrogacy regret’. Lexi co-facilitated the Campaigning against surrogacy in the UK and beyond workshop.

Dr Julia Long: Julia is a lesbian feminist who has worked in academia, the women’s sector and local government. She has researched, written and spoken on the harms of pornography, male violence and the construction of ‘gender’. Julia spoke on The sex industry: A conducive context for male violence? panel.

Olivia Maurel: Born through surrogacy and fighting to abolish surrogacy, Olivia is a spokeswoman of the Casablanca Declaration. She spoke on the What’s wrong with surrogacy? panel.

Helen McDonald: Helen has been working with children and young people for over 20 years, as a teacher, an advocate, and now as a therapist. She has extensive experience of working with children and young people subjected to sexual violence and of facilitating sessions with children and young people on issues of consent in relationships and the impacts of pornography. Helen has created resources to be used by school staff to approach issues of consent and to help them to support young survivors of sexual violence in school. Helen facilitated the Raising kids in a pornified world workshop.

Gary Powell: Gary is the Research Fellow for Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity at the Bow Group think tank. His work focuses on exposing the harms of gender ideology and on campaigning for the complete abolition of surrogacy for all people, regardless of sexual orientation. He is a longstanding campaigner for gay rights and was a co-writer and the UK production manager for the recently-released film, “The Lost Boys: Searching for Manhood”. Gary has written for several outlets, including Lesbian and Gay News, Conservative Home, and Public Discourse, has been interviewed by GB News and for various podcasts, and speaks regularly at conferences in opposition to surrogacy and gender ideology. Gary spoke on the What’s wrong with surrogacy? panel.

Liz Purslow: Liz was a NHS midwife for twenty years, always instinctively opposed to surrogacy due to the health risks to mothers and babies as well as implications for the NHS. She joined the Nordic Model Now surrogacy campaign as soon as the Law Commission Consultation became public. She is the co-founder of Stop Surrogacy Now UK.

Heli St Luce: Heli designs and facilitates workshops and writes. She works with pseudonyms to encompass her varied areas of operation. As Maxi McNaughty she is a therapist, healer, ceremony and ritual guide. As Ms Ina Propriate she performs. The constant is the use and sharing of her powerful and moving voice which inspires and gives her work a unique quality. Heli facilitated the Groomed workshop and spoke in the opening plenary and sang at the end of the day.

Hannah Shead: Hannah is part of the FiLiA Women First Team. She has seen first-hand the brutality and harm that the sex trade causes to women and girls – and is a passionate believer in the need for systemic change that enables women to exit. In her day job, she is the CEO of Trevi, an award-winning women’s and children’s charity based in South West England. Hannah facilitated the A woman’s experiential journey: Supporting women with experience of the sex industry workshop.

Björn Suttka: Björn is one of the founders of Male Allies Challenging Sexism (MACS), a group of men, whose aim it is to engage men in education, consciousness raising and activism to counteract sexism, misogyny and violence against women and girls. Björn co-facilicated the Pornification deprogramming workshop for men alongside Michael Conroy.

Valérie Tender: Valérie is a survivor of sexual exploitation from Montréal, Canada. She was stuck in the sex industry for six years, from the ages of 16 to 23 years old, and her porn-sick father was her driver through most of it. She is now 44 years old. Valérie is a radical feminist as well as a singer, a conceptual artist and a social entrepreneur. She has had experience working as a counsellor in a homeless shelter as well as helping fellow women durably leave the sex trade, unpack their experiences and rebuild an identity other than that of servicing males. She works from a trauma-informed perspective. After this conference, Valérie will embark on a European speaking tour over 32 days in seven countries, talking about ‘Why we need to abolish prostitution’ in the four languages she speaks: French, English, Spanish and Portuguese, making this a multilingual tour. She believes in the need to internationalise our fight and have the same abolitionist laws everywhere on earth. Valérie spoke in the opening plenary.

Linda Thompson: Linda is originally from Northern Ireland where she was involved in youth and community work, focusing on peer education. She led transnational work and managed an award winning multidisciplinary sexual health team. In Scotland, Linda led national HIV programmes developing new approaches to research and education. Currently, she co-ordinates a programme of national work in Scotland on commercial sexual exploitation including training, capacity building, awareness raising and developing new resources. She supports a Scottish national network of services supporting those in the sex industry and sits on national working groups on sexual exploitation and human trafficking. Linda’s passion is highlighting lived experiences and the impact of policy on women’s lives. Linda spoke on The sex industry: A conducive context for male violence? panel.

Kellie Ziemba: Kellie has lived experience of sexual exploitation, both inside and outside of the sex industry and is passionate about the needs and rights of women and girls. Her professional career has spanned the fields of youth work, education, child and family services and criminal justice. Previously a strategic lead for a large rape crisis centre, she now leads an organisation that supports, advocates for, and empowers women subject to, or at risk of, sexual exploitation, including women involved in street-based prostitution. Kellie spoke on the closing plenary.